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Background. Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is one of the most prevalent cancers with a poor prognosis. Immunotherapy, especially immune checkpoint blockade (ICB), is becoming a potential therapeutic choice for NPC patients. Thus, the identification of patients who could benefit from immunotherapy is clinically significant. Methods. The NPC expression profiles from GSE102349 were used to calculate the cell scores of the tumor microenvironment (TME). The consensus clustering method was utilized to identify the potential molecular subtypes among NPC samples. The hub genes were selected from subtype-specific genes by bioinformatics analysis. Machine learning models, including random forest (RF) and support vector machine (SVM) algorithms, were constructed to predict the immune subtype. Results. In the present study, we identified two TME subtypes among NPC patients. Patients with the S1 subtype have higher levels of immune cells, immune checkpoint genes, and prognosis. Using expression data profiles of NPC patients, we constructed machine learning models for predicting TME subtypes of NPC patients. This model consists of 8 genes (LCK, CD247, FYN, ZAP70, SH2D1A, CD3D, CD3E, and CD3G). Among them, LCK, FYN, SH2D1A, and CD3D were associated with better prognoses. Among the two constructed models, SVM exhibited a higher area under curve (AUC) of 0.977, when compared with RF (AUC = 0.966). The web server based on the constructed machine learning models will contribute to the identification of NPC patients likely to benefit from ICB therapies. Conclusions. This study identified NPC subtypes and provided an accurate model to select individuals who are most likely to respond to ICB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If the score of disease severity of all patients with severe COVID-19 is set as 2 points, the same as the score for patients with severe pneumonia, this is contrary to the results of RCT studies involved in NRS2002. This suggests that setting the NRS2002 disease severity score of severe COVID-19 as 0 points cannot reflect the malnutrition of patients and also does not reflect the patients with a poor prognosis. Retrospective analysis revealed that only two of these 15 patients had NRS2002 scores of >=3 points, accounting for 13.33%, and the NRS2002 score of one patient with COVID- 19 who developed to the severe stage during the treatment process was less than 3 points (Figure 1A and B). [Extracted from the article]

aimed to retrospectively analyze and explore the value of nutritional status in the prognostic assessment of patients with AIDS-related lymphoma (ARL). Methods: In this retrospective study, the clinical data of 69 patients with ARL were collected. All patients had a definite diagnosis of non-Hodgkin lymphoma by pathological examination and met the requirements of the Hematopoietic and Lymphocytic Tissue Tumor Classification (2016) established by the World Health Organization. Patients who did not receive standard chemotherapy, those with incomplete medical records, and those with an unclear pathological diagnosis were excluded. The patients were divided into two groups (survival and death) according to the prognostic outcome, and their clinical characteristics and prognoses were discussed by relevant statistical methods. Results: During the three-year follow-up period, 20 (28.99%) patients died, and 49 (71.01%) survived. The one-year cumulative survival rate was 78.26%. A univariate analysis found that the prognosis was associated with the International Prognostic Index (IPI) score, BMI, ALB, PA, and CD4 T lymphocyte count. The Cox risk proportional regression analysis showed that the IPI score, BMI, and PA were the independent risk factors for survival; their combination had a greater ability to forecast the clinical outcome (area under the curve = 0.874, P < 0.001). Conclusion: In this study, at the time of the visit, the patients with ARL tended to be in the advanced stages of disease and, therefore, at high risk of mortality. Therefore, their nutritional status might be of great value to the prognostic assessment. The combination of BMI, PA, and IPI scores could be used for risk stratification and better screening of high-risk patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The convolutional neural network (CNN) model is an active research topic in the field of EEG signals analysis. However, the classification effect of CNN on EEG signals of amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is not ideal. Even if EEG signals are transformed into multispectral images that are more closely matched with the model, the best classification performance can not be achieved. Therefore, to improve the performance of CNN toward EEG multispectral image classification, a multi-view convolutional neural network (MVCNN) classification model based on inceptionV1 is designed in this study. This model mainly improves and optimizes the convolutional layers and stochastic gradient descent (SGD) in the convolutional architecture model. Firstly, based on the discreteness of EEG multispectral image features, the multi-view convolutional layer structure was proposed. Then the learning rate change function of the SGD was optimized to increase the classification performance. The multi-view convolutional nerve was used in an EEG multispectral classification task involving 19 aMCI with T2DM and 20 normal controls. The results showed that compared with the traditional classification models, MVCNN had a better stability and accuracy. Therefore, MVCNN could be used as an effective feature classification method for aMCI with T2DM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A lack of sleep is linked with a range of inner ear diseases, including hearing loss and tinnitus. Here, we used a mouse model to investigate the effects of sleep deprivation (SD) on noise vulnerability, and explored the mechanisms that might be involved in vitro , focusing particularly corticosterone levels and autophagic flux in cells. Female BALB/c mice were divided into six groups [control, acoustic trauma (AT)-alone, 1 day (d) SD-alone, 1d SD pre-AT, 5d SD-alone, and 5d SD pre-AT]. Cochlear damage was then assessed by analyzing auditory brainstem response (ABR), and by counting outer hair cells (OHCs) and the synaptic ribbons of inner hair cells (IHCs). In addition, we measured levels of serum corticosterone and autophagy protein expression in the basilar membranes by ELISA kits, and western blotting, respectively. We found that SD-alone temporarily elevated ABR wave I amplitude, but had no permanent effect on hearing level or IHC ribbon numbers. Combined with AT, the number of synaptic ribbons in the 1d SD pre-AT group was significantly higher than that in the AT-alone group, whereas the 5d SD pre-AT group showed more severe synaptopathy, and a greater loss of OHCs after 2 weeks than the other experimental groups exposed to noise. Correspondingly, the levels of corticosterone in the AT-alone group were higher than those of the 1d SD pre-AT group, but lower than those of the 5d SD pre-AT group. The 1d SD pre-AT group showed a marked elevation in the expression of microtubule-associated protein 1 light chain 3B (LC3B), whereas the AT-alone group exhibited only a mild increase. In contrast, the levels of LC3B did not change in the 5d SD pre-AT group. Experiments with HEI-OC-1 cells and cochlear basilar membrane cultures showed that high-concentrations of dexamethasone, and the inhibition of autophagy, aggravated cellular apoptosis induced by oxidative stress. In conclusion, noise-induced synaptopathy and hair cell loss can be mitigated by preceding 1d SD, but will be aggravated by preceding 5d SD. These findings may be attributable to corticosterone levels and the extent of autophagy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To investigate the role of percutaneous transhepatic cholangial drainage (PTCD) combined with percutaneous endoscopic jejunostomy (PEJ) in maintaining the nutrition state in patients with advanced ampullary neoplasms.Materials and Methods: Sixty patients who suffered from advanced ampullary neoplasms and could not tolerate internal drainage operation or biliary stent placement were enrolled. After PTCD, PEJ was implemented, and then the enteral nutrient solution + bile were instilled through PEJ tube for enteral nutrition support. Before and 1, 2, 3, and 4 weeks after surgery, the body weight, bilirubin, liver function, nutritional status, and immunologic function indexes were detected and compared.Results: All patients had successfully completed PTCD combined with PEJ, and no serious complication occurred. The body mass index of the patients from 4 weeks after surgery was significantly higher than before (P < 0.05). From 2 weeks, both serum total bilirubin and direct bilirubin levels were significantly lower than before (P < 0.05). From 1 week, both alanine aminotransferase and aspartate aminotransferase levels were significantly lower than before (P < 0.05); from 2 weeks, the level of gamma-glutamyl transferase was significantly lower than before (P < 0.05). From 1 week, the levels of albumin, transferrin, and prealbumin were significantly increased compared with before (P < 0.05), and serum CD3+ cell content, CD4+ cell content, and CD4+/CD8+ ratio were significantly improved compared with before (P < 0.05).Conclusion: PTCD combined with PEJ is a safe and effective method for maintaining nutrition state in patients with advanced ampullary neoplasms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ti/Ti-Al multilayered composites with different volume fractions of α-Ti layer were fabricated by hot press sintering. Microstructural observation indicates that the phase compositions in all the composites are α-Ti, Ti 3 Al, TiAl, TiAl 2 and TiAl 3 . The tensile strength and fracture toughness of Ti/Ti-Al multilayered composites are influenced by the volume fraction of α-Ti layer. The composite with 53 vol% Ti presents the highest tensile strength and suitable ductility at room temperature, and its fracture toughness can reach 47.6 MPa m , which is much higher than that of TiAl intermetallic alloy and Ti/Al 3 Ti composites. Fracture analysis reveals that a certain volume fraction of Ti layers can effectively prevent the crack propagation when the crack is extended to the interface, resulting in high tensile strength and acceptable ductility at the same time. The improvement of toughness is associated with crack deflection and crack bridging provided by the appropriate thickness of remaining α-Ti layer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) have emerged as a promising technology to monitor and explore the oceans instead of traditional undersea wireline instruments. Traditional routing protocols are inefficient for UWSNs due to the specific nature of the underwater environment. In contrast, Opportunistic Routing (OR) protocols establish an online route for each transmission, which can well adapt with time-varying underwater channel. Cross-layer design is an effective approach to combine the metrics from different layers to optimize an OR routing in UWSNs. However, typical cross-layer OR routing protocols that are designed for UWSNs suffer from congestion problem at high traffic loads. In this paper, a Cross-Layer-Aided Opportunistic Routing Protocol (CLOR) is proposed to reduce the congestion in multi-hop sparse UWSNs. The CLOR consists of a negotiation phase and transmission phase. In the negotiation phase, the cross-layer information in fuzzy logic is utilized to attain an optimal forwarder node. In the transmission phase, to improve the transmission performance, a burst transmission strategy with network coding is exploited. Finally, we perform simulations of the proposed CLOR protocol in a specific sea region. Simulation results show that CLOR significantly improves the network performances at various traffic rates compared to existing protocols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a non-binary low-density parity-check (NB-LDPC) coded high-order continuous phase modulation (CPM) system is designed and optimized to improve power and iterative efficiencies. Firstly, the minimum squared normalized Euclidean distance and the 99% double-sided power bandwidth are introduced to design a competitive CPM, improving its power efficiency under a given code rate and spectral efficiency. Secondly, a three-step method based on extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) and entropy theory is used to design NB-LDPC codes, which reduces the convergence threshold approximately 0.42 and 0.58 dB compared with the candidate schemes. Thirdly, an extrinsic information operation is proposed to address the positive feedback issue in iterative detection and decoding and the value of bit error rate (BER) can approximately be reduced by 5 × 10 − 3 . Finally, iteration optimization employing the EXIT chart and mutual information between demodulation and decoding is performed to achieve a suitable tradeoff for the communication reliability and iterative decoding delay. Simulation results show that the resulting scheme provides an approximately 3.95 dB coding gain compared to the uncoded CPM and achieves approximately 0.5 and 0.7 dB advantages compared with the candidate schemes. The resulting NB-LDPC-coded high-order CPM for a given code rate and spectral efficiency converges earlier into a turbo cliff region compared with other competitors and significantly improves power and iterative efficiencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the effects of three different intermittent mixing modes (top, middle and bottom) on the performance of solid state anaerobic digestion (SS-AD) process of pig manure, corn stover and cucumber residues in a stirred tank reactor (STR). Results showed the cumulative methane yields of reactors had similar values (P > 0.05) except for the unmixed reactor (CK), which had a very low methane production. Reactors of top-mixed (T1) had shortest technical digestion time (T 80) and more stable physicochemical characteristics than the other treatments. These findings indicated the three mixing modes had almost no effect on the cumulative methane yields, but affected the digestion process. The main bacteria in T1 reactor was Clostridium_sensu_stricto_1. However, Caldicoprobacter accounted for a relatively large proportion of the bacteria in middle-mixed (T2) and bottom-mixed (T3) which was consistent with the later methane production than T1. Methanosarcina was the dominant archaea in T1 reactor. Methanoculleus and Methanosarcina were the main microorganisms in top and bottom area of T2 and T3 reactor. Acidogenic (top area) and methanogenic zones (bottom area) were formed in all reactors respectively, by combining the physicochemical properties and microorganisms. Overall, T1 showed more advantages for methane production during SS-AD. • Partial mixing affected AD process rather than methane yields. • Reactors without any mixing failed with propionic acid inhibition. • Partial mixing resulted in the differently spatial distribution of microorganisms. • Mixing at top accelerated the methanogenesis process compared with others. • Acidogenic (top area) and methanogenic zones (bottom area) were formed in reactors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]